of food and water was deposited in it, and the awful words, Vade in pacem, were the signal for immuring the criminal. It is not likely that, in latter times, this punishment was often resorted to; but, among the ruins of the abbey of Coldingham, were some years ago discovered the remains of a female skeleton, which, from the shape of the niche and position of the figure, seemed to be that of an immured nun (Scott). Lockhart, in reprinting the above note, has " Vade in pace; "but it is "pacem "in the 1st ed. As the Edinburgh Review noted, Scott mistranslates the Latin in 601 below. The meaning is "Go into peace, or into eternal rest, a pretty intelligible mittimus to another world."

475. 'Twixt each attempt. A blundering construction, sometimes found in good prose writers.

477. 'Twas ocean's swells, etc. A harsh line.

486. A hectic, etc.

The MS. reads:

"A feeble and a flutter'd streak,

Like that with which the mornings break
In Autumn's sober sky."

491. And armed herself, etc. The MS. has:

"And mann'd herself to bear.

It was a fearful thing to see
Such high resolve and constancy,
In form so soft and fair;
Like Summer's dew her accents fell,
But dreadful was her tale to tell."

The next stanza goes on thus:

"I speak not now to sue for grace,
For well I know one minute's space
Your mercy scarce would grant :
Nor do I speak your prayers to gain;
For if my penance be in vain,

Your prayers I cannot want.

Full well I knew the Church's doom,
What time I left a convent's gloom,
To fly with him I loved;

And well my folly's meed he gave -
I forfeited, to be a slave,

All here, and all beyond the grave,

And faithless hath he proved;

He saw another face more fair,

He saw her of broad lands the heir,

And Constance loved no more

Loved her no more, who, once Heaven's bride,

Now a scorn'd menial by his side,

Had wander'd Europe o'er."

520. Plight. Plighted. Such contraction of the participle of verbs ending in d and t was common in Elizabethan English. See Abbott, Shakes. Gr. § 342. Cf. lift for lifted in Gen. vii. 17, Ps. xciii. 3, etc.

523. Mortal lists. Deadly combat in the lists. For the formalities of a knightly contest of this kind, see Shakespeare, Richard II. i. 3, and the notes of our ed.

524. Their oaths. The combatants made oath that their quarrel was "true and just," etc.

531. Say ye, etc.

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The MS. reads:

Say ye, who preach the heavens decide
When in the lists the warriors ride."

556. Hath. The reading of the 1st and other early eds. more recent eds. have "has."

All the

.560. Shall ever wed with Marmion. The MS. adds, "His schemes reveal'd, his honor gone."

583. Ignorant. The MS. has "witless," which means the same. 587. Wont. Were wont, as we should have to say now, wont being used only as the participle. For the old use, as here, cf. Milton, P. L., as when men wont to watch," etc.

i. 332:

588. Stared. Cf. Shakespeare, J. C., iv. 3. 280: "That makest my blood cold and my hair to stare; and Tempest, i. 2. 213: "With hair upstaring then like reeds, not hair." The MS. reads here:

"Stared up

aspiring from her head."
uncurling

601. Part in peace. See on 468 above.

610. That conclave, etc. The MS. has, "From that dark penancevault to-day."

617. Tottering on. The 1st ed. has a period after on; but this is evidently a misprint, though retained (as a colon) in all the more recent eds.

618. Even, etc.

The MS. reads:

"That night amid the vesper's swell,

They thought they heard Constantia's yell,

And bade the mighty bell to toll,

For welfare of a passing soul."

Jeffrey remarks that the sound of the knell is "described with great force and solemnity."

621. Parting. Departing. See on i. 20 above.

624. Warkworth. See on 142 above. For the hermit, see Percy's ballad of The Hermit of Warkworth.

626. Bamborough. See on 148 above.

629. The stag, etc. On this description of the stag on the Cheviot Hills, cf. the Lady of the Lake, i. 40 fol.

INTRODUCTION TO CANTO THIRD.

"WILLIAM ERSKINE, Esq., advocate, Sheriff-depute of the Orkneys, became a Judge of the Court of Session by the title of Lord Kinnedder, and died at Edinburgh in August, 1822. He had been from early youth the most intimate of the Poet's friends, and his chief confidant and adviser as to all literary matters. See a notice of his life and character by the late Mr. Hay Donaldson, to which Sir Walter Scott contributed several paragraphs" (Lockhart).

21. Then, wild as cloud, etc.

Cf. 241, 242 below.

25. In sounds, etc. The 1st ed. has "In sound," etc. The MS. reading is:

"With sound now lowly, and now higher,
Irregular to wake the lyre."

28. Loftier. The reading of the 1st ed., misprinted "lofty" ever since.

32. To poetry. The MS. has "to thriftless rhyme."

35. Approach those masters, etc. That is, imitate the old classic poets, not the rude minstrels of Scotland.

43. Or deem'st thou not, etc. The MS. reads:

"Dost thou not deem our later day
Yields topic meet for classic lay?
Hast thou no elegiac tone
To join that universal moan,

Which mingled with the battle's yell
Where venerable Brunswick fell?
What! not a verse, a tear, a sigh,
When valor bleeds for liberty?"

46. For Brunswick's venerable hearse. That is, for the hearse (see on i. ind. 199) of the venerable Duke of Brunswick, who commanded the Prussian forces at the battle of Jena, Oct. 14, 1806.

54. Brandenburg. Here put rhetorically for Prussia, the province of Brandenburg being the nucleus of the Prussian monarchy. Frederick III., Elector of Brandenburg, became the first King of Prussia. 59. That dragon. Napoleon Bonaparte.

67. Seemed. Apparently used for beseemed.
74. For honored life, etc. The MS. reads:

"For honor'd life an honor'd close-
The boon which falling heroes crave,
A soldier's death, a warrior's grave.
Or if, with more exulting swell,
Of conquering chiefs thou lovest to tell,
Give to the harp an unheard strain,
And sing the triumphs of the main-
Of him the Red-Cross hero teach,
Dauntless on Acre's bloody breach,
And, scorner of tyrannic power,
As dauntless in the Temple's tower:
Alike to him the sea, the shore,
The brand, the bridle, or the oar,
The general's eye, the pilot's art,

The soldier's arm, the sailor's heart;

Or if to touch such chord be thine," etc.

75. And when revolves, etc. When, as the Clown in Twelfth Night (v. 1. 385) says, "the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." 78. Arminius. The Latin name of the ancient German hero Hermann, who strove to free his country from the Roman yoke. Tacitus describes him as one "who dared to attack the Romans, not in the beginning but in the fulness of their power — in battle not always victorious, but unconquered in war.”

81. The Red-Cross hero. Sir Sidney Smith, the famous English

admiral. The Red-Cross is the cross of St. George, the national emblem of England.

86. The shattered walls, etc. Referring to St. Jean d'Acre, where the Turks, supported by Smith and a handful of British sailors, kept Napoleon and the French army at bay for sixty days, when he raised the siege and retreated.

91. When stubborn Russ, etc. Smith, with the permission of his government, became a captain in the Swedish service during the war with Russia.

For mettled the early eds. have "metal'd." See on i. ind. 308 above. 92. Warped. Frozen; apparently suggested by Shakespeare's use of the word in A. Y. L., ii. 7. 187: "Though thou [Winter] the waters warp; " where the reference is probably to the curving of the surface of the water in freezing, though some critics take warp in a more general sense (change).

94. The father, etc. Sir Ralph Abercromby, the British general who commanded the expedition to Egypt in 1800-1801, and died from wounds received at the battle of Alexandria. Smith was wounded at the same time, and compelled to return to England. 100. The wild harp. That is, Shakespeare's.

103. The bold Enchantress. Joanna Baillie (1764-1851), who has been called "the Sister of Shakespeare." Scott admired and patronized her, and she sometimes made long visits at his house. Basil and De Mont

fort were two of her plays.

117. Warps. Gives a bend or bias to.

119. Whether an impulse, etc. Lockhart quotes Pope, Essay on

Man:

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As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,

Receives the lurking principle of death;

The young disease, that must subdue at length,

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength :

So, cast and mingled with his very frame,

The Mind's disease, its RULING PASSION came:

Each vital humor which should feed the whole

Soon flows to this, in body and in soul:

Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head,
As the mind opens, and its functions spread,
Imagination plies her dangerous art,
And pours it all upon the peccant part.
Nature its mother, Habit is its nurse:
Wit, Spirit, Faculties, but make it worse;

Reason itself but gives it edge and power;

As Heaven's blest beam turns vinegar more sour, etc.

130. Batavia's sultry sky. Batavia, the capital of the Dutch possessions in the East Indies, was laid out on a marshy flat and intersected by canals, making the city thoroughly Dutch but very unhealthy for that tropical climate.

Here is

137. The weather-beaten hind. The Scotch Highlander. 149. Lochaber. The wildest mountain district in Scotland. Ben Nevis, the highest peak (4,406 feet) of the country. Loch Garry is a small lake in the Athole Forest region, the source of the river Garry. Devonshire is one of the loveliest portions of rural England.

158. Then rise, etc. The MS. reads:

"The lonely hill, the rocky tower,
That caught attention's wakening hour."

165. Reed. Pipe. Cf. Milton, Comus, 345: reed with oaten stops."

"Or sound of pastoral

172. The lonely infant. Scott, when three years old, was sent for his health to the farm of Sandy-Knowe, the residence of his paternal grandfather. Smailholm Tower, a ruined baronial keep in the neighborhood, is the mountain tower of 158. He afterwards made it the scene of his ballad, The Eve of Saint John; and it is supposed to be the original of Avenel Castle in The Abbot and The Monastery. It is about two miles from Dryburgh Abbey, where the poet is buried. 173. Wall-flower. The MS. has "woodbine." 180. The aged hind. "Auld Sandy Ormiston," the cow-herd of the farm, and the favorite companion of the young Scott. Lockhart says: "If the child saw him in the morning, he could not be satisfied unless the old man would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep him company as he lay watching his charge."

183. Strength. Stronghold. Cf. Milton, P. L. vii. 141: "This inaccessible high strength," etc.

188-191. Methought, etc. These four lines are not in the MS.

194. Sleights. Stratagems. The 1st ed. has sleights, which has been corrupted to "slights " in all the more recent eds.

197. Wight. See on ii. ind. 113 above.

201. The scarlet ranks. The English "red-coats." 202. While stretched, etc. The MS. reads:

"While still with mimic hosts of shells,

Again my sport the combat tells -
Onward the Scottish Lion bore,

The scatter'd Southron fled before."

211. Gray-haired sire. Robert Scott, the poet's grandfather. 216. Whose doom. That is, his judgment, or arbitration.

In a note to the 2d ed. Scott says: "Upon revising the poem, it seems proper to mention that the lines,

'Whose doom discording neighbors sought,
Content with equity unbought; '

have been unconsciously borrowed from a passage in Dryden's beautiful epistle to John Driden of Chesterton."

221. Alike, etc. The MS. has "The student, gentleman, and saint." The clergyman alluded to was Rev. John Martin, minister of Mertoun, in which parish Sandy-Knowe is situated.

223. Timeless. Unseasonable, inopportune.

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225. A grandame's child. That is, a spoiled child."

228. From me. Lockhart's and other recent eds. misprint "For me.". 237. Since oft thy judgment, etc. Scott had a high opinion of his friend's critical judgment, and liked to have Erskine look over his manuscript before it went to press. See Lockhart's Life of Scott, chap. xii. and elsewhere. Cf. also p. 271 above.